Joseph Smith

President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

Male

BornDec 23, 1805

DiedJun 27, 1844

Joseph Smith, Jr. was an American religious leader and the founder of the Latter Day Saint movement, the predominant branch of which is Mormonism. At age twenty-four, Smith published the Book of Mormon, and in the next fourteen years he attracted thousands of followers, established cities and temples, and created a lasting religious culture.… Read More

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Timeline

Learn about the memorable moments in the evolution of Joseph Smith.

CHILDHOOD

1805Birth
Joseph Smith, Jr. was born on December 23, 1805, in Sharon, Vermont, to Lucy Mack Smith and her husband Joseph, a merchant and farmer.
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After suffering a crippling bone infection when he was seven, the younger Smith hobbled around on crutches for three years. Read Less

TEENAGE

181611 Years Old
In 1816–17, after an ill-fated business venture and three years of crop failures, the Smith family moved to the western New York village of Palmyra and eventually took a mortgage on a farm in nearby Manchester town.
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During the Second Great Awakening, the region was a hotbed of religious enthusiasm. Between 1817 and 1825 there were several camp meetings and revivals in the Palmyra area. Although the Smith family was caught up in this excitement, they disagreed about religion. Joseph Smith became interested in religion at about the age of twelve, and he participated in church classes, read the Bible, and reportedly showed an interest in Methodism. With his family, he also took part in religious folk magic, a common practice at the time. Like many people of that era, both his parents and his maternal grandfather had visions or dreams that they believed communicated messages from God. Because of the religious divisions in his family and community, Smith was conflicted about the benefit of organized religion, saying that he had become concerned for the welfare of his soul but was confused by competing religious denominations. Read Less

182015 Years Old
Smith later recalled having an epiphany around 1820 that resolved his sense of religious confusion and personal guilt.
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Praying in a wooded area near his home, he said he saw a vision in which God told him his sins were forgiven, and that all contemporary churches had "turned aside from the gospel." Smith said he told a preacher about the experience who he said dismissed the story with contempt; otherwise the experience was largely unknown, including to most Mormons, until the 1840s. Although Smith probably originally understood the event as a personal conversion, this "First Vision" would later grow in importance among Mormons, who see it as the founding event of Mormonism.<br /><br /> The Smith family supplemented its meager farm income by treasure-digging. Joseph was said to have an ability to use seer stones for locating lost items and buried treasure. To do so, Smith would put a stone in a white stovepipe hat and would then see the required information in reflections given off by the stone. Read Less

182318 Years Old
In 1823, Smith said that while praying at night for forgiveness from his sins, he was visited by an angel named Moroni, who revealed the location of a buried book of golden plates as well as other artifacts, including a breastplate and a set of spectacles with lenses composed of seer stones, which had been hidden in a hill near his home.
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Smith said he attempted to remove the plates the next morning but was unsuccessful because the angel prevented him.<br /><br /> During the next four years, Smith made annual visits to the hill, but each time returned without the plates. Meanwhile, Smith continued traveling to western New York and Pennsylvania as a treasure seeker and a farmhand. Read Less

TWENTIES

182621 Years Old
In 1826, he was brought before a court in Chenango County, New York, for "glass-looking", or pretending to find lost treasure.
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While boarding at the Hale house in Harmony, Pennsylvania, Smith met Emma Hale and began courting her. When Smith asked for Emma's hand, her father, Isaac Hale, objected because Smith was "a stranger" and had no means of supporting his daughter other than money digging. Read Less

She gave birth to seven children, the first three of whom (a boy Alvin in 1828 and twins Thaddeus and Louisa on April 30, 1831) died shortly after birth. When the twins died, the Smiths adopted twins, Julia and Joseph, whose mother had recently died in childbirth. (Joseph died of measles in 1832.) Joseph and Emma Smith had four sons who lived to maturity: Joseph Smith III (November 6, 1832), Frederick Granger Williams Smith (June 29, 1836), Alexander Hale Smith (June 2, 1838), and David Hyrum Smith (November 17, 1844, born after Joseph's death)., DNA testing had provided no evidence that Smith had fathered any children by women other than Emma.<br /><br /> Throughout her life and on her deathbed, Emma Smith frequently denied that her husband had ever taken additional wives. Emma claimed that the very first time she ever became aware of a polygamy revelation being attributed to Joseph by Mormons was when she read about it in Orson Pratt's booklet The Seer in 1853. Emma campaigned publicly against polygamy and also authorized and was the main signatory of a petition in Summer 1842, with a thousand female signatures, denying that Joseph was connected with polygamy, and as president of the Ladies' Relief Society, Emma authorized publishing a certificate in October 1842 denouncing polygamy and denying her husband as its creator or participant. Read Less

On September 22, 1827, Smith made his last annual visit to the hill, taking Emma with him.
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This time, he said, he retrieved the plates and placed them in a locked chest. He said the angel commanded him not to show the plates to anyone else but to publish their translation, reputed to be the religious record of indigenous Americans. Joseph later told Emma's parents that his treasure-seeking days were behind him. Although Smith had left his treasure hunting company, his former associates believed he had double-crossed them by taking for himself what they considered joint property. They ransacked places where a competing treasure-seer said the plates were hidden, leading Smith to believe that he could not accomplish the translation in Palmyra. Read Less

In October 1827, Smith and his pregnant wife moved from Palmyra to Harmony (now Oakland, Pennsylvania) aided by money from a comparatively prosperous neighbor Martin Harris.
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Living near his in-laws, Smith transcribed some of the characters (what he called "reformed Egyptian") engraved on the plates and then dictated a translation to his wife.<br /><br /> In February 1828, Martin Harris arrived to assist with the translation. Harris took a sample of the characters to a few prominent scholars, including Charles Anthon, who Harris said initially authenticated the characters and their translation, then recanted upon hearing that Smith had received the plates from an angel. Read Less

Anthon later denied this claim but Harris returned to Harmony in April 1828 motivated to act as Smith's scribe.
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Translation continued until mid-June 1828, until Harris began having doubts about the existence of the golden plates. Harris convinced Smith to let him take the existing 116 pages of manuscript to Palmyra to show a few family members. Harris then lost the manuscript–of which there was no copy–at about the same time as Smith's wife Emma gave birth to a stillborn son. Read Less

Smith said that as punishment for losing the manuscript the angel took away the plates and he had lost his ability to translate until September 22, 1828, when Smith said that the plates were restored.

1829 - 18302 More Events

182924 Years Old
Smith did not earnestly resume the translation again until April 1829, when he met Oliver Cowdery, who replaced Harris as Smith's scribe.
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They worked full time on the translation between April and early June 1829, and then moved to Fayette, New York, where they continued to work at the home of Cowdery's friend Peter Whitmer. When the translation spoke of an institutional church and a requirement for baptism, Smith and Cowdery baptized each other, saying that John the Baptist had appeared and given them priesthood authority to do so. Translation was completed around July 1, 1829. Knowing that potential converts to the planned church might find Smith's story of the plates incredible, Smith asked a group of 11 witnesses, including Martin Harris and male members of the Whitmer and Smith families, to sign statements testifying that they had seen the golden plates, and in the case of the latter eight witnesses, had actually handled the plates. According to Smith, the angel Moroni took back the plates after Smith was finished using them. Read Less

The translation, known as the Book of Mormon, was published in Palmyra on March 26, 1830, by printer E. B. Grandin. Martin Harris financed the publication by mortgaging his farm. Read Less

Soon thereafter on April 6, 1830, Smith and his followers formally organized the Church of Christ, and small branches were established in Palmyra, Fayette, and Colesville, New York.
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The Book of Mormon brought Smith regional notoriety, but also strong opposition by those who remembered Smith's money-digging and his 1826 trial near Colesville. After Cowdery baptized several new members (including Emma Smith), the Mormons began receiving threats of mob violence. Before Smith could confirm the new members, he was arrested and brought to trial as a disorderly person. Though Smith was acquitted, he and Cowdery had to flee Colesville to escape a gathering mob. Probably referring to this period of flight, Smith told years later of hearing the voices of Peter, James, and John who he said ordained Smith and Cowdery to a higher priesthood.<br /><br /> When Oliver Cowdery and other church members attempted to exercise independent authority–as when Hiram Page used a seer stone to locate the American New Jerusalem prophesied by the Book of Mormon–Smith responded by establishing himself as the sole prophet. In 1833 Smith dispatched Cowdery to lead a mission to Missouri to find the true location of the New Jerusalem and to proselytize the Native Americans. Smith also dictated a lost "Book of Enoch", telling how the biblical Enoch had established a city of Zion of such civic goodness that God had taken it to heaven. Read Less

After moving to Kirtland, Ohio, in January 1831, Smith mitigated the new converts' exuberant exhibition of spiritual gifts, bringing the Ohio congregation within his own religious authority.
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Prior to conversion, the congregation had been practicing a form of Christian communism, and Smith adopted a communal system within his own church, calling it the United Order of Enoch. Read Less

At Rigdon's suggestion, Smith promised the church's elders that in Kirtland they would receive an endowment of heavenly power, and in the church's June 1831 general conference, he introduced the greater authority of a High ("Melchizedek") Priesthood to the church hierarchy.
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The church grew as new converts poured into Kirtland. By the summer of 1835, there were fifteen hundred to two thousand Mormons in the vicinity of Kirtland, many expecting Smith to lead them shortly to the Millennial kingdom. Though Oliver Cowdery's mission to the Indians was a failure (halted by a Federal agent to the Indian tribes), he sent word he had found the site for the New Jerusalem in Jackson County, Missouri. Read Less

After he visited there in July 1831, Smith agreed and pronounced the county's rugged outpost Independence to be the "center place" of Zion.
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Rigdon, however, disapproved of the location, and for most of the 1830s, the church was divided between Ohio and Missouri. Read Less

The Book of Mormon drew many converts to the church, but as Fawn Brodie noted, "The book lives today because of the prophet, not he because of the book." Smith had assumed a role as prophet, seer, and apostle of Jesus Christ, and by early 1831, he was introducing himself as "Joseph the Prophet".
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The language of authority in Smith's revelations was appealing to converts, and the revelations were given with the confidence of an Old Testament prophet.<br /><br /> In June 1830 Smith received a "revelation of Moses" in which Moses saw "the world and the ends thereof" and asked God questions about the purpose of creation and man's relationship to God. This revelation initiated a revision of the Bible on which Smith worked sporadically until 1833 and which remained unpublished at his death. Smith believed that the Bible had been corrupted through the ages, and he worked to restore the original intent. Smith's revision added long passages rewritten "according to his inspiration". While many changes involved straightening out seeming contradictions or making small clarifications, other changes added large "lost" portions to the text. For instance, Smith nearly tripled the length of the first five chapters of Genesis in writing what would become the Book of Moses. Read Less

THIRTIES

After the dedication of the Kirtland temple in late 1837, "Smith's life descended into a tangle of intrigue and conflict," and a series of internal disputes led to the collapse of the Kirtland Mormon community.
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Smith was accused of false steps in promoting a church-sponsored bank and of having a relationship with his serving girl, Fanny Alger. Building the temple left the church deeply in debt, and Smith was hounded by creditors. After Smith heard about treasure supposedly hidden in Salem, Massachusetts, he traveled there and received a revelation that God had "much treasure in this city". After a month, he returned empty-handed. Read Less

Smith and others church leaders then set up a joint stock company to act as a quasi-bank, establishing the Kirtland Safety Society in January 1837, which issued bank notes capitalized in part by real estate.
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Smith invested heavily in the notes and encouraged the Saints to buy them as a religious duty. The bank failed within a month. As a result, the Kirtland Saints suffered intense pressure from debt collectors and severe price volatility. Smith was held responsible for the failure, and there were widespread defections from the church, including many of Smith's closest advisers. Read Less

After a warrant was issued for Smith's arrest on a charge of banking fraud, Smith and Rigdon fled Kirtland for Missouri on the night of January 12, 1838.

After leaving Jackson County, the Saints in Missouri established the town of Far West. Smith's plans to redeem Zion in Jackson County had lapsed by 1838, and after Smith and Rigdon arrived in Missouri, Far West became the new Mormon "Zion".
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In Missouri, the church also received a new name: the "The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints", and construction began on a new temple. Soon after Smith and Rigdon arrived at Far West, hundreds of disaffected Saints who had remained in Kirtland followed them to Missouri. Smith encouraged the settlement of land outside Caldwell County, instituting a stake in Adam-ondi-Ahman. Also during this time, a church council expelled many of the oldest and most prominent leaders of the church, including John Whitmer, David Whitmer, W. W. Phelps, and Oliver Cowdery.<br /><br /> Though Smith hated violence, his experiences led him to believe that his faith's survival required greater militancy against anti-Mormons. Around June 1838, recent convert Sampson Avard formed a covert organization called the Danites to intimidate Mormon dissenters and oppose anti-Mormon militia units. Sidney Rigdon was working to restore the United Order, but lawsuits by Oliver Cowdery and other dissenters threatened that plan. After Rigdon issued a thinly veiled threat in a sermon, the Danites expelled the dissenters from the county. While it is unclear how much Smith knew of the Danites, he at least partially approved of their activities. In a keynote speech at the town's Fourth of July celebration, Rigdon issued threats against non-Mormon aggressors, promising a "war of extermination" against mobs, should Mormons be attacked. After Rigdon's oration, Smith allowed the speech to be published as a pamphlet. Read Less

On November 1, 1838, the Saints surrendered to 2,500 state troops, and agreed to forfeit their property and leave the state. Smith was immediately court-martialed for treason, and nearly executed, but militiaman Alexander Doniphan, who was also the Saints' attorney, probably saved Smith's life, arguing that Smith was a civilian. Smith was then sent to a state court for a preliminary hearing, where several of his former allies, including Danite commander Sampson Avard, testified against him. Smith and five others, including Rigdon, were charged with "overt acts of treason", and transferred to the jail at Liberty, Missouri to await trial. <br /><br />Smith's months in prison with Rigdon strained their relationship, and Brigham Young rose in prominence as Smith's defender. Under Young's leadership, about 14,000 Saints made their way to Illinois and searched for land to purchase. Smith bade his time writing contemplative statements directed mainly to Mormons. He did not deny responsibility for the Danites, but he said he had been ignorant of Avard's extreme militancy. Many Saints now considered Smith a fallen prophet, but he assured them he still had the heavenly keys. He directed the Saints to collect and publish all their stories of persecution, and to moderate their antagonism to non-Mormons. Read Less

On April 6, 1839, after a grand jury hearing in Davis County, Smith and his companions escaped custody, perhaps with the guards' assistance, while they were being escorted to Boone County.
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Newspapers throughout the country criticized Missouri for expelling the Mormons, and Illinois accepted the refugees who gathered along the banks of the Mississippi. Smith purchased high-priced swampy woodland in the hamlet of Commerce and urged his followers to move there. Promoting the image of the Saints as an oppressed minority, he unsuccessfully petitioned the federal government for help in obtaining reparations. In the summer of 1839 the Saints suffered from a terrible plague of malaria and the next two summers were even worse. Also that summer, Smith sent Brigham Young and other members of the Quorum of the Twelve to missions in Europe where they found willing converts, many of them poor factory workers.<br /><br /> The religion also attracted a few wealthy and influential converts, including John C. Bennett, M.D., the Illinois quartermaster general. Bennett used his connections in the Illinois legislature to obtain an unusually liberal charter for the new city, which Smith named "Nauvoo" (Hebrew נָאווּ, meaning "to be beautiful"). The charter granted the city virtual autonomy, authorized a university, and granted Nauvoo habeas corpus power–which saved Smith's life by allowing him to fend off extradition to Missouri Though Mormon general authorities controlled Nauvoo's civil government, the city promised an unusually liberal guarantee of religious freedom. The charter also authorized the Nauvoo Legion an autonomous militia with actions limited only by state and federal constitutions. "Lieutenant General" Smith and "Major General" Bennett became its commanders, thereby controlling by far the largest body of armed men in Illinois. Read Less

184035 Years Old
The early Nauvoo years were a period of doctrinal innovation. Smith introduced baptism for the dead in 1840, and in 1841, construction began on the Nauvoo Temple as a place for recovering lost ancient knowledge.

Smith, who was often a poor judge of character, made Bennett Assistant President of the church, and Bennett was elected Nauvoo's first mayor. Read Less

In 1841, Smith began revealing the doctrine of plural marriage to a few of his closest male associates, including Bennett, who began using it as a license for free love.
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When embarrassing rumors of "spiritual wifery" got abroad, Smith forced Bennett's resignation as Nauvoo mayor. In retaliation, Bennett wrote "lurid exposés of life in Nauvoo". Read Less

In April 1841, Smith wed Louisa Beaman, and during the next two and a half years he may have married or been sealed to 30 additional women, ten of them already married to other men, though this was generally done with the knowledge and consent of their husbands.
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Ten of Smith's wives were under the age of twenty, while others were widows over fifty. The practice of plural marriage was kept a secret.<br /><br /> Polygamy (or plural marriage) caused a breach between Smith and his first wife, Emma. Although Emma knew of some of her husband's marriages, she almost certainly did not know the extent of his polygamous activities. Read Less

An 1841 revelation promised the restoration of the "fulness of the priesthood", and in May 1842, Smith inaugurated a revised endowment or "first anointing".
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The endowment resembled rites of freemasonry that Smith had observed two months earlier when he had been initiated into the Nauvoo Masonic lodge. At first the endowment was open only to men, who once initiated became part of the Anointed Quorum. For women, Smith introduced the Relief Society, a service club and sorority within which Smith predicted women would receive "the keys of the kingdom". Smith also elaborated on his plan for a millennial kingdom. He no longer envisioning the building of Zion in Nauvoo, but viewed Zion as encompassing all of North and South America, with Mormon settlements being "stakes" of Zion's metaphorical tent. Zion also became less a refuge from an impending tribulation than a great building project. Read Less

In the summer of 1842, Smith revealed a plan to establish the millennial Kingdom of God, which would eventually establish theocratic rule over the whole earth.
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By mid-1842, popular opinion had turned against the Saints. In particular, Thomas C. Sharp, editor of the Warsaw Signal, criticized the Saints' political and military aspirations. Read Less

After an unknown assailant shot at Missouri governor Lilburn Boggs on May 6, 1842, anti-Mormons in Illinois reported rumors that Smith had predicted Boggs's death.
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Circumstantial evidence suggested that the shooter was Smith's bodyguard, Porter Rockwell, who was later tried and acquitted. Nevertheless Boggs ordered Smith's extradition, and Smith went into hiding, believing that if he went to Missouri he would be murdered. Smith ultimately avoided extradition when a US district attorney for Illinois passed along his opinion that the extradition was unconstitutional. Read Less

Smith's teachings were rooted in dispensational restorationism. He taught that the Church of Christ restored through him was a latter-day restoration of the early Christian faith, which had been lost in a great apostasy. At first, Smith's church had little sense of hierarchy, Smith's religious authority being derived from visions and revelations. Though Smith did not claim exclusive prophethood, an early revelation designated him as the only prophet allowed to issue commandments "as Moses". This religious authority encompassed economic and political as well as spiritual matters. For instance, in the early 1830s, he temporarily instituted a form of religious communism, called the United Order, requiring Saints to consecrate all their property to the church. He also envisioned that theocratic institutions he established would have a role in the world-wide political organization of the Millennium. <br /><br />By the mid-1830s, Smith began teaching a hierarchy of three priesthoods (Melchizedek, Aaronic, and Patriarchal), each of them a continuation of biblical priesthoods through patrilineal succession or ordination by biblical figures appearing in visions. Upon introducing the Melchizedek or "High" Priesthood in 1831, Smith taught that its recipients would be "endowed with power from on high", thus fulfilling a need for a greater holiness and an authority commensurate with the New Testament apostles. Read Less

This doctrine of endowment evolved through the 1830s, until in 1842, the Nauvoo endowment included an elaborate ceremony containing elements similar to Freemasonry and the Jewish tradition of Kabbalah.

Another extradition attempt was made in June 1843, when Illinois Governor Thomas Ford reluctantly agreed to turn Smith over to Missouri on the old charge of treason.
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Two Missourian officers arrested Smith, but failed to bring him to Missouri when Smith was released on a writ of habeas corpus. While this ended the Missourians' attempts at extradition, it caused significant political fallout in Illinois. Read Less

In December 1843, under the authority of the Anointed Quorum, Smith petitioned Congress to make Nauvoo an independent territory with the right to call out federal troops in its defense.
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Smith then wrote the leading presidential candidates and asked them what they would do to protect the Mormons. After receiving noncommittal or negative responses, Smith announced his own third-party candidacy for President of the United States, suspending regular proselytizing and sending out the Quorum of the Twelve and hundreds of other political missionaries. Read Less

Notable revelations include an 1831 revelation called "The Law" containing directions for missionary work, rules for organizing society in Zion, a reiteration of the Ten Commandments, an injunction to "administer to the poor and needy", and an outline for the Law of consecration. An 1832 revelation called "The Vision" added to the fundamentals of sin and atonement, introduced doctrines of life after salvation, the theme of Exaltation, and a heaven with degrees of glory. Another 1832 revelation "on Priesthood" was the first to explain priesthood doctrine. Three months later, Smith gave a lengthy revelation called the "Olive Leaf" containing themes of cosmology and eschatology, and discussing subjects such as light, truth, intelligence, and sanctification, and a related revelation given in 1833 put Christ at the center of salvation. Another 1833 revelation called the "Word of Wisdom", was framed not as a commandment, but a recommendation. Coming at a time of temperance agitation, it counseled a diet of wholesome herbs, fruits, grains, a sparing use of meat, and recommended that Saints avoid "strong" alcoholic drinks, tobacco, and "hot drinks" (later interpreted to mean tea and coffee). Smith and other Saints did not strictly follow this counsel, though it later became a requirement in the LDS Church. In 1835 Smith gave the "great revelation" that organized the priesthood into quorums and councils, and served as a complex blueprint for church structure. Read Less

Smith's last revelation on the "New and Everlasting Covenant" was recorded in 1843, and dealt with the theology of family, the doctrine of sealing, and plural marriage.
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Before 1832, most of Smith's revelations dealt with establishing the church, gathering the saints, and building the City of Zion, while later revelations dealt with the priesthood, endowment, and exaltation. The revelations slowed in Kirtland during the autumn of 1833, and again after the dedication of the Kirtland Temple, as Smith relied more heavily on his own teachings. Smith moved away from written revelations opening with "verily thus saith the Lord" and taught more in sermons, conversations, and letters. For instance, the doctrines of baptism for the dead and the nature of God were introduced in sermons, and one of Smith's most famed statements about there being "no such thing as immaterial matter" was recorded from a casual conversation with a Methodist preacher.<br /><br /> Smith taught that all existence was material, including a world of "spirit matter" so fine that it was invisible to all but the purest mortal eyes. Matter, in Smith's view, could neither be created nor destroyed; the creation involved only the reorganization of existing matter. Like matter, "intelligence" was co-eternal with God, and human spirits had been drawn from a pre-existent pool of eternal intelligences. Nevertheless, spirits were incapable of experiencing a "fullness of joy" unless joined with corporeal bodies. The work and glory of God was to create worlds across the cosmos where inferior intelligences could be embodied. Read Less

The endowment was extended to women in 1843, though Smith never clarified whether women could be ordained to priesthood offices.
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Smith taught that the High Priesthood's endowment of heavenly power included the sealing powers of Elijah, allowing High Priests to effect binding consequences in the afterlife. For example, this power would enable proxy baptisms for the dead and priesthood marriages that would be effective into the afterlife. Elijah's sealing powers also enabled the second anointing, or "fulness of the priesthood", which, according to Smith, sealed married couples to their exaltation.<br /><br /> During the early 1840s, Smith unfolded a theology of family relations called the "New and Everlasting Covenant" that superseded all earthly bonds. He taught that outside the Covenant, marriages were simply matters of contract, and that in the afterlife Mormons outside the Covenant would be limited in their progression. To fully enter the Covenant, a man and woman must participate in a "first anointing", a "sealing" ceremony, and a "second anointing", or sealing by the "Holy Spirit of Promise". When fully sealed into the Covenant, Smith said that no sin nor blasphemy (other than the eternal sin) could keep them from their "exaltation" in the afterlife. According to Smith, only one person on earth at a time—in this case, Smith—could possess this power of sealing. Read Less

In 1843, Emma temporarily accepted Smith's marriage to four women boarded in the Smith household, but she soon regretted her decision and demanded that the other wives leave.
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In July, Smith dictated a revelation pressuring Emma to accept plural marriage, but the two were not reconciled until September, after Emma began participating in temple rituals and received an "endowment". Read Less

Smith was born in Sharon, Vermont, and by 1817 had moved with his family to the burned-over district of western New York, an area repeatedly swept by religious revivals during the Second Great Awakening. The Smiths believed in visions and prophecies, and participated in folk religious practices typical of the era. According to Smith, beginning in the early 1820s he had visions, in one of which an angel directed him to a buried book of golden plates inscribed with a Judeo-Christian history of ancient American civilizations. In 1830, he published what he said was an English translation of these plates as the Book of Mormon and organized the Church of Christ as a restoration of the early Christian church. Church members were later called Latter Day Saints, Saints, or Mormons. <br /><br />In 1831, Smith and his followers moved west to Kirtland, Ohio, and also established an outpost in Independence, Missouri, where Smith planned to build a city called Zion. In 1833, Mormons in Zion were expelled by Missouri settlers who were alarmed by the rapid growth of the Mormon community. The Kirtland church collapsed in 1837, after members held Smith responsible for a bank failure. Smith regrouped with his remaining followers in northern Missouri, but his presence and policies exacerbated tensions with non-Mormon settlers. After an 1838 military conflict, Latter Day Saints were expelled from the state, and Smith was imprisoned. In 1839, Smith rejoined his followers to settle at Nauvoo, Illinois, where he served as both a spiritual and political leader. Read Less

In 1844, Smith and the Nauvoo City Council angered non-Mormons by destroying a printing press after it was used to publish an exposé critical of Smith's power and practice of polygamy.
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During the ensuing turmoil, Smith was imprisoned in Carthage, Illinois, and killed when a mob stormed the jailhouse.<br /><br /> During his lifetime Smith published many revelations and other texts that are regarded as scripture by his followers. His teachings include unique views about the nature of God, cosmology, family structures, political organization, and religious collectivism. His followers regard him as a prophet of at least the stature of Moses and Elijah. Smith's legacy includes a number of religious denominations, the largest of which are the The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and Community of Christ. Read Less

In March 1844, following a dispute with a federal bureaucrat, Smith organized the secret Council of Fifty with authority to decide which national or state laws Mormons should obey.
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The Council was also to select a site for a large Mormon settlement in Texas, California, or Oregon, where Mormons could live under theocratic law beyond other governmental control. In effect, the Council was a shadow world government, a first step toward creating a global "theodemocracy". One of the Council's first acts was to elect Smith as "prophet, priest and king" of the millennial monarchy. Read Less

By the spring of 1844, a rift developed between Smith and a half dozen of his closest associates.
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Most notably William Law, Smith's trusted counselor, and Robert Foster, a general of the Nauvoo Legion, disagreed with Smith about how to manage Nauvoo's economy. Both also said that Smith had proposed marriage to their wives. Read Less

Believing the dissidents were plotting against his life, Smith excommunicated them on April 18, 1844.
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The dissidents formed a competing church and the following month, at Carthage, the county seat, they procured grand jury indictments against Smith for polygamy and other crimes.<br /><br /> On June 7, 1844, the dissidents published the first (and only) issue of the Nauvoo Expositor, calling for reform within the church. The paper decried polygamy and Smith's new "doctrines of many Gods", and it alluded to Smith's kingship and theocratic aspirations, promising to present evidence of its allegations in succeeding issues. Fearing the newspaper might bring the countryside down on the Mormons, the Nauvoo city council declared the Expositer a public nuisance and ordered the Nauvoo Legion to destroy the press. In the words of historian Richard Bushman, Smith "failed to see that suppression of the paper was far more likely to arouse a mob than the libels. It was a fatal mistake." Read Less

While campaigning for President of the United States in 1844, Smith had opportunity to take political positions on issues of the day.
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Smith considered the United States Constitution, and especially the Bill of Rights, to be inspired by God and "the Saints' best and perhaps only defense". He believed a strong central government crucial to the nation's well-being but thought democracy better than tyranny—although he also taught that a theocratic monarchy was the ideal form of government. In foreign affairs, Smith was an expansionist, though he viewed "expansionism as brotherhood".<br /><br /> Smith favored a strong central bank and high tariffs to protect American business and agriculture. He disfavored imprisonment of convicts except for murder, preferring efforts to reform criminals through labor; he also opposed courts-martial for military deserters. He supported capital punishment but opposed hanging, preferring execution by firing squad or beheading in order to "spill criminal's blood on the ground, and let the smoke thereof ascend up to God".<br /><br /> Despite having published a pro-slavery essay in 1836, Smith later strongly opposed slavery. During his presidential campaign, he proposed abolishing slavery by 1850 and compensating slaveholders through sale of public lands. Smith did not believe blacks to be genetically inferior to whites; he welcomed both freemen and slaves into the church. But he opposed baptizing slaves without permission of their masters, and he opposed miscegenation. Read Less

Smith attracted thousands of devoted followers before his death in 1844 and millions within a century.
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Smith's role in the Latter Day Saint religion was comparable to that of Muhammad in early Islam. He is regarded as a prophet and apostle on par with Moses, Elijah, Peter or Paul, second in importance within the faith only to Jesus.<br /><br /> Mormons and Ex-Mormons have produced a large amount of scholarly work about Smith, and while Mormons tend to shield their prophet's reputation, those who have broken away from the faith have to justify their decision to leave. Interpretations range from viewing Smith as a prophet who restored the true faith, to a "pious fraud" who believed he was called of God to preach repentance, and felt justified inventing visions in order to convert people, to a gifted "mythmaker" who was the product of his Yankee environment. Mormon and non-Mormon biographers agree that Smith was one of the most influential, charismatic, and innovative figures in American religious history. Read Less